Sport Commitment Model

The Sport Commitment Model explains why people keep participating in a sport by treating commitment as a psychological state -- the desire and resolve to continue -- that is produced by a small set of measurable determinants. Introduced by Tara Scanlan and colleagues in 1993, the model proposes that commitment rises with sport enjoyment, personal investments, involvement opportunities, and social constraints, and falls as attractive alternatives to involvement increase. Each determinant is a latent factor measured by self-report items, and commitment itself is a latent outcome predicted by their combination, making the model a structural account of motivation that can be tested with questionnaires and structural equation modelling. Because commitment in turn predicts persistence, the model links the psychology of why athletes stay engaged to the behavior of actually continuing to take part.